'Long march' survivor dies

BEIJING - Chen Zongying, one the few women who joined in the Chinese communist's epic 1934-36 Long March, has died at age 101, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.

Chen died in Beijing on May 31, Xinhua said.

Born in southern China's Hunan province in January 1902, Chen married Ren Bashi, then head of the Communist Party's youth league, at age 26 and joined the party in 1932.

In 1934, she set out on the Long March, the Red Army's 7,750-mile retreat west from Jiangxi to escape Chiang Kai-shek's encircling Nationalist forces. The brutal march was a key event in the founding of Mao Zedong's China.